Foodie Friday - What would Carlos drink?

The Tour de France. The television event on Versus that I look forward to every summer. My man has even admitted to getting sucked into it with my influence. We may even play around with a "Fantasy Team" competition next year.

But, it is now over. Actually, by the time I actually post this, it will have been over for about 2 weeks. But since it never gets any headlines, I figure most of you haven't heard a thing about who won.

His name? Carlos Sastre. His country? Spain.

I love how his son is lifting up his hands in victory here at the final ceremony. Wants to be just like dad.

How did the Americans fare? Not bad. We had one, Christian Vande Velde, who finished 5th - which in terms of the biggest, most famous road bicycle race in the world... not bad at all.

If you really want to geek it up, you can see the standings here.

So in honor of the Tour de France Champion for 2008, Carlos Sastre of Spain, I present this week's Foodie Friday: What would Carlos drink?

Sangria, anyone?

We were invited recently over to a friend's house one Saturday evening. It was to be an evening of good food, better fellowship, and better still drinks. Our friends had requested Sangria.

After the idea was brought up, we all stood there and thought for a minute... none of us had ever made Sangria before. Which we all thought was odd since it had Mexican origins.

So I stepped up to the challenge and began doing some research on how to make this drink. One thing I found out... it doesn't have Mexican origins. It is Spanish in origin. Southern Spain to be exact. Read more of its history and origin here.

I found what looked like a good recipe and tried it out.

What I found was that it's mostly a "by taste" sort of thing. The recipe above was not bad after making some adjustments, which may have been necessitated by the absence of certain spirits in my cabinet that I was not willing to go spend the money on. I added a little more sugar and ginger ale. A couple of times I used some blood orange juice (an italian soda) which made it interesting. I used cherries as well as strawberries.

So, on a hot summer evening, with good food and great friends and fellowship, Sangria hit the spot for us.

And, being from Spain, I can use it to toast the new TDF Champion.

Congratulations Mr. Sastre! It was a race well done.

As a note: Obviously I have not been in France photographing the race. I accessed these pictures from the Team CSC-Saxo Bank website and are creditted to Tim De Waele.